THIS WEEKEND
At warp speed, Star Trek: Insurrection
easily debuted at number one over the
weekend with $22.1M over the Friday-to-Sunday period. Opening in 2,620
starships, the ninth installment in the long-running franchise scored a
strong $8,417 average per theater. Insurrection's
opening trailed the debuts for the last two Trek
films First Contact,
which opened with $30.7M in 1996, and Generations
which launched with $23.1M in 1994. However, both of those films opened
in November while Insurrection bowed
in a month when films have smaller openings but longer legs. With the debut
of this new film, Captain Picard and his crew were able to generate the
fourth best December opening ever.

For Paramount, Insurrection
was the studio's fourth and final number
one opening of the year joining Deep Impact,
The Truman Show,
and The Rugrats Movie.
Add in Titanic's
historic voyage and Paramount claimed the top spot 19 times this year.
Star Trek: Insurrection got
off to a very promising start and has the holiday season right around the
corner to look forward to. With movies like You've
Got Mail, Stepmom,
and Patch Adams
on their way to the multiplexes, Star Trek
faces few other competitors for the action-adventure segment of moviegoers.
Paramount is hoping that the film can crossover to non-Trekkers especially
with its added elements of humor and romance. Star
Trek: Insurrection invades Germany, Australia,
and the United Kingdom in three weeks.

The $60 million-budgeted
Insurrection
was just what Paramount needed to thwart a late-year surge by Buena Vista
for the annual market share crown. After this weekend, Paramount's lead
increases to about $32M over Disney and should continue to grow, although
at a very small pace, until Christmas weekend when Buena Vista releases
Mighty Joe Young
hoping for a final week rally.

Slipping one spot to
second was the computer-animated insect feature A
Bug's Life with $11.2M. Down 35% from
last weekend, the Disney/Pixar collaboration pushed its cume to an impressive
$83.5M after 19 days of wide release. A
Bug's Life is now running about even with
Toy Story
which collected $83.1M over the same period in 1995, and 11% ahead of 101
Dalmatians which grossed $75.6M over the
period and finished its domestic run with $136.2M. With kids going on their
vacations next week, the insect pic should see some new life later this
month. By Saturday, A Bug's Life should
pass the cumulative gross of the DreamWorks bug film Antz
which currently stands at $86.4M.

Michael Keaton was
a jolly, happy soul taking third place with the family film Jack
Frost which opened with $7.1M. The story
of a dad who dies and comes back as a snowman averaged $3,301 per theater
in 2,152 sites. Frost's
debut actually represented the biggest opening for Keaton's starring vehicles
since leaving the Batman
franchise in 1992. His films since then have included Desperate
Measures ($13.3M domestic gross), the
ensemble film Jackie Brown
($39.7M), Multiplicity ($20.1M),
and Speechless
($20.6M). Family films tend to show stability at the box office in December
so Jack Frost may
have a decent road ahead of it.

Enemy of the State
dropped one place to fourth with $6.7M. Off just 31%, the Will Smith-Gene
Hackman conspiracy thriller has upped its cume to $72.2M and did not seem
to be too affected by incoming competition from Star
Trek: Insurrection. Claiming the fifth
spot were the toddler titans of The Rugrats
Movie with $4.5M. Down 41% from last weekend,
the other Paramount franchise film in the top five raised its 24-day total
to $73.2M.

Buena Vista's The
Waterboy, splashed its way down to sixth
with $4.4M pushing its gross to date to $136.6M. The Adam Sandler comedy
now stands as the sixth highest-grossing release of 1998 and is set to
leapfrog over Deep Impact
($140.5M) and Doctor Dolittle
($144.1M) before the year is through. The combined strength of A
Bug's Life, Enemy
of the State, and The
Waterboy helped push Buena Vista over
the $1 billion mark in annual ticket sales for 1998 this weekend. This
marks the first time that two different distributors crossed the mark in
the same year as Paramount Pictures has also reached the milestone.

Universal Studios contributed
the next three films at the box office. Psycho
got slashed in its sophomore frame tumbling
62% to $3.8M. After ten days, the Gus Van Sant remake of the Hitchcock
classic thriller has collected just $15.6M and should finish its domestic
run with $20-25M. The studio is likely to turn a small profit from the
$25M-budgeted Psycho once
worldwide theatrical, home video, and television revenues are tabulated.

Babe: Pig in the
City enjoyed a slim 30% decline and took
eighth with $1.7M. The talking pig movie has now eaten up $13.6M since
its Thanksgiving debut. Meet Joe Black,
another costly film for Universal, placed ninth with $1.7M. Off 33% from
last weekend, the Brad Pitt romance has managed to gross $41.5M and is
the studio's top grosser of 1998.

Rounding out the top
ten, Gramercy's period piece Elizabeth
added $1.3M to its fortune and now stands with a royal $11.7M while still
playing in 555 theaters.

In limited release,
Paramount opened the critically-acclaimed Sam Raimi dark drama A
Simple Plan in 27 markets and concocted
a $390,563 gross for a powerful $12,599 average in 31 theaters. Starring
Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, and Bridget Fonda, A
Simple Plan recently was named one of
the year's ten best films by the National Board of Review, and over the
weekend saw Thornton win Best Supporting Actor accolades from the Los Angeles
Film Critics Association in a tie with Bill Murray, as well as from the
Boston Society of Film Critics in a tie with William H. Macy. The studio
will expand the film on a week-to-week basis hoping to springboard off
of end-of-year kudos and into a successful winter run for a hard-to-market
film. Also a big winner with the L.A. Critics was Saving
Private Ryan which won three top prizes
for picture, director, and cinematography.

Popping its head into
the arthouses was Miramax's Shakespeare
in Love which rang up $224,012 in eight
theaters for a stellar $28,002 average. In its fourth round with movie
fans, Fox Searchlight's Waking Ned Devine
expanded into 49 houses and took in $554,922
giving the pic a still-sturdy $11,325 per site.

Compared to projections,
Star Trek: Insurrection
came in a few of notches below my $25M prediction while Jack
Frost was very close to my $6M forecast.

Take this week's NEW
Reader Survey on You've
Got Mail vs. The
Prince of Egypt. In last week's survey,
readers were asked which of five films would win the Oscar for Best Picture
of 1998. Of 2,314 responses, 54% chose Saving
Private Ryan, 22% selected The
Thin Red Line, 20% picked The
Truman Show, 3% said Life
is Beautiful, and 2% said A
Civil Action.

Online right now are
Box Office Guru's movie review
for Insurrection
and an interview with cast members Patrick
Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, and Brent Spiner. Be sure to read the Weekly
Rewind column which reports on the box office fortunes of the Star
Trek franchise. For reviews of recent
films visit Chief's Movie
Review Page.

The top ten films grossed
$64.3M which was down 7% from last year when Scream
2 opened loudly at number one with $32.9M,
and up 4% from 1996 when Tom Cruise's last film Jerry
Maguire debuted in first place with $17.1M.

Be sure to check back
on Thursday for a complete summary, including projections, for next
weekend when You've Got Mail
and The Prince of Egypt
invade theaters everywhere.

Below are final
studio figures for the weekend. Click
on the title to jump to its official home page:

This column is updated three times each week
: Thursday (upcoming weekend's summary),
Sunday (post-weekend analysis with
estimates), and Monday night (actuals).
Source : EDI, Exhibitor Relations. Opinions expressed in this column are
those solely of the author.